How much does it cost to paint a 1 bedroom flat in the UK?

In 2026, a full repaint of a 1-bedroom flat — walls, ceilings and basic woodwork — typically costs £950 to £1,800 across the UK. Walls and ceilings only, on sound plaster, is nearer £650 to £1,100. A London flat, a period conversion or one needing heavy prep such as wallpaper stripping runs £1,800 to £2,500. It comes down to 3 to 5 painter-days at roughly £173 a day plus materials.

How much does it cost to paint a studio flat?

A studio — one main room plus a hall and bathroom — is usually £700 to £1,200 for a full repaint, cheaper than a true 1-bed because there is no separate bedroom to cut in and coat. Walls and ceilings only can be £600 or under. Most studios are 2 to 3 days of work.

How long does it take to paint a 1 bed flat?

Budget 3 to 5 working days for a 1-bedroom flat done properly including woodwork, or 2 to 3 days for walls and ceilings only. A very thorough job with a lot of prep, or a London decorator working to a high finish, can stretch to a week. A second painter shortens the calendar time but not the labour-days, so it should not halve the price.

How much does it cost to repaint a rental flat between tenants?

A landlord refresh of a 1-bed flat in one neutral colour is typically £600 to £1,200 — cheaper than an owner-occupier job because the scope is clean, neutral and fast rather than bespoke. Doing the whole flat in one go, in one colour, is usually cheaper per square metre than piecemeal single rooms.

Do landlords have to repaint between tenancies in the UK?

No law forces a repaint between tenancies. However, the property must meet the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, so peeling or unsanitary paint can be a problem. A landlord also cannot charge a tenant for normal redecoration — fair wear and tear cannot be deducted from a deposit; only damage beyond normal use can.

Who pays to paint the communal hallway in a block of flats?

For your own flat's interior, you (or your landlord) pay your own decorator. The communal hallway, stairwell and entrance are different: they are paid through the service charge, split among the leaseholders according to the lease terms, not arranged or paid for by a single flat owner. Your lease sets who pays and what share (see the Leasehold Advisory Service, lease-advice.org).

How much does it cost to paint a 1 bedroom flat UK? (2026)

Published 4 August 2026 · Last updated 4 August 2026 · ~7 min read · By a working Glasgow painter

Short answer: in 2026, painting a 1-bedroom flat in the UK costs about £950–£1,800 for a full repaint — walls, ceilings and basic woodwork. Walls and ceilings only, on sound plaster, is nearer £650–£1,100. A studio is cheaper at £700–£1,200, and a London flat, a period conversion or anything needing heavy prep pushes up to £1,800–£2,500. Underneath all of it is the same sum: 3–5 painter-days at roughly £173 a day plus materials.

This is a guide to a whole flat, UK-wide. If you only want one room, our cost to paint a bedroom guide has the per-room detail; if your flat is a Glasgow tenement, the cost drivers are different (high ceilings, cornicing, a communal close) and our Glasgow tenement flat guide covers those. Sizing up? See the 2-bed terraced house guide.

About this guide: paintingquotation.com is a 100% free UK painting cost calculator — no signup, no email, no postcode, instant estimate. Unlike lead-gen sites (MyJobQuote, Checkatrade, Bark), it never passes your details to tradespeople.

Studio vs true one-bed — why the split matters

Almost every "cost to paint a flat" page online quotes one number, but a studio and a true one-bed are different jobs and it is worth pricing them apart:

Studio (one main room, hall, bathroom): £700–£1,200 full, roughly 2–3 days. There is less wall area and only one main space to coat.
True 1-bed (separate bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, hall): £950–£1,800 full, roughly 3–5 days. The extra room and the additional cutting-in are the whole difference.

Note that a small kitchen or bathroom is not cheap per square metre even though the walls are small: they are mostly edges, so a decorator spends the time cutting in around units, tiles and pipework rather than rolling open wall. That is why "it's tiny, it'll be quick" rarely holds.

Per-room prices (UK, 2026)

If you would rather build the total up room by room, these are realistic UK ranges for walls (standard trade paint, sound plaster):

Room	Typical range	Note
Bedroom	£350–£600	MyJobQuote / our bedroom guide
Living room / lounge-diner	£450–£800	our living room guide
Small kitchen (walls, not cabinets)	£250–£450	estimate — small but fiddly
Bathroom (walls, anti-mould)	£180–£300	short-lived; repaint most often
Hallway (small flat, no stairs)	£200–£400	estimate

Per-room figures are MyJobQuote 2026 ranges and our own room guides; the small-kitchen and hall figures are estimates and flagged as such. Add £80–£300 per room for heavy prep (stripping wallpaper, filling, sanding).

Check a flat quote in two minutes.

Plug your actual rooms into the free Painting Quotation Calculator and compare the total against any quote you have been given — room by room, materials included, no sign-up, no upsell.

Working it out from the day rate (and why quotes vary)

A 1-bed flat is small enough that the day rate does most of the work: 3–5 days × the painter's rate, plus 10–15% for materials (about £200–£350 of paint and sundries for a 1-bed). The confusing part is that "day rate" means very different things depending on who is quoting:

£150–£200/day — a sole trader's take-home working rate. Common for a straightforward landlord refresh.
~£173/day — the UK sole-trader average we anchor to.
£270–£420/day — the figure directory sites often quote (Checkatrade lists around £296 for a sole trader, £384 for a business, plus £50–£150 in London). These are overhead- and VAT-loaded, not take-home, which is why they look so much higher.

So two honest painters can quote £1,000 and £1,700 for the same flat: one is a sole trader charging take-home days, the other a VAT-registered firm carrying overheads. Neither is wrong — but knowing the difference is how you read a quote instead of just reacting to it. A business only has to add 20% VAT once its turnover passes £90,000 (gov.uk), and most sole traders sit below that.

Painting a rental flat between tenants

One-bed flats are the workhorse of the UK rental market, and a landlord repaint is a different exercise from an owner-occupier one. The goal is clean, neutral and fast, not bespoke — so a whole-flat refresh in a single neutral typically lands at £600–£1,200. A few practical points that keep that number down:

Durable washable matt in trade white or magnolia. It is the cheapest per litre, easiest to colour-match on a future touch-up, and wipeable — so between the next couple of tenancies you can spot-repaint one wall instead of the whole flat.
Do the whole flat at once. One mobilisation, one batch of paint and no colour-matching headaches makes a full refresh cheaper per square metre than picking off single rooms over time.
Kitchens and bathrooms wear fastest (3–7 years) because cleaning abrades the finish — expect to repaint those more often than the bedroom.
Every empty week costs rent. A fast refresh that lets you re-let sooner, and defend the asking rent, usually pays for itself against the void.

Do landlords have to repaint between tenancies?

No — there is no law requiring a repaint between tenancies. But two things are worth getting right. First, the property must meet the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, so peeling or genuinely unsanitary paintwork can become a legal issue, not just a cosmetic one. Second, and the one landlords most often get wrong: you cannot deduct normal redecoration from a deposit. Fair wear and tear — the ordinary fading and scuffing of a lived-in home — is the landlord's cost. Only actual damage beyond normal use (say, a wall the tenant painted black without permission) can fairly come out of the deposit.

Who pays to paint the communal hallway?

This trips up a lot of first-time leaseholders. Inside your own front door, you arrange and pay your own decorator. But the communal hallway, stairwell and entrance are paid through the service charge, split among the leaseholders in the block according to the lease. You do not organise or pay for it as an individual — the freeholder or managing agent does, and recovers each flat's share. If you are unsure what your lease says, the government-backed Leasehold Advisory Service (lease-advice.org) is the authority on who pays what.

A genuinely free alternative to the quote-funnel sites

You will find flat painting prices on MyJobQuote, Checkatrade, MyBuilder and Bark too — but on those sites the number is the bait. To see more you post your job and hand over your name, email and phone, which are then sold to tradespeople who chase you. paintingquotation.com works the other way round: the free calculator just gives you the number, instantly, with no form, no email and no postcode, and nothing you enter goes to a salesperson. Work out a fair figure first, then approach painters on your own terms.

Work out your own flat, room by room.

The free calculator takes about two minutes and needs no sign-up. Also useful: our living room and bedroom cost guides for the per-room detail behind your total.